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Today’s front pages with a taste of what the new PM will face – politicalbetting.com

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  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,193
    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,442
    Leon said:

    Selebian said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    There is no logical reason why British Railways Plc should or could not exist, beyond pointless ideology.

    Clearly all of the EU countries and Japan have got it wrong. We know better, so we pay the French...

    Isn't loads of the memories of "Bad old BR" because boomers remember train travel in the 70s, and everything was a bit shit, beige and dull (Bar the music) in the 70s ?

    One of the quickest boomer identifiers "bad old days of BR"
    I'm not a boomer and I remember the 'bad old days of BR'.

    It is staff salaries and fare costs that get prioritised in a nationalised system, which give the unions a single point of leverage, and so service quality, infrastructure and rolling stock maintenance and renewal gets deprioritised.

    That's why the train service at my local station was shit up until the mid-1990s, with only one train every hour - and those dating back to the 1960s, and not infrequently they broke down - whilst the station itself was regularly unheated, flaking and falling to pieces. Surly staff too.

    Transport (outside major capital projects) tends to be near bottom of the list for central gov funding after health, education, pensions and the like, so I'd need some convincing that a nationalised system would be "better".

    TfL is fairly good because it gets a shed-ton of funding and passenger revenue, because it's in London.
    BR was really and genuinely shit. I can remember standing as a student on the forlorn platforms of Newport Station on a winter's day, waiting to change for the train to Hereford

    Newport in winter is never great, but being in a BR station in Newport in the 1980s was dystopian
    So BR was shit because you were waiting for a train connection in Newport in the Winter? What do you want, taxi ride? Maybe you should have paid for one then.
    lol. Are you actually ANGRY because I am criticising a Welsh railway station in the 1980s?

    I know PB can get angry about anything, but this might be a new peak
    Hey, no dissing Newport! :wink:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eijc2tGe-zM
    Hahahaha


    That's excellent

    "Twinned with Guanxi province in China, there's no province finer"

    Came out when I was working in Newport (living in Cardiff). Was quite popular with the locals, you'd hear it played in clubs a bit.

    Goldie Lookin Chain were a bit pissed they hadn't thought of it, I think, and did a far less funny rebuttal to it, 'You're not fom Newport'
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,850
    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism. It's like setting a drama in a medieval world and hearing people going on about gender equality, human rights and democracy.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607
    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,308
    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    Presumably their position will be that everything of significance that has been found has been planted though.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,898
    edited August 2022
    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?

    Seriously impressive if true, including the development timescale. Nothing like a special military operation war to rapidly advance the state of military technology.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    Presumably their position will be that everything of significance that has been found has been planted though.
    They already started that with the nonsense about the taint team.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,308
    Scott_xP said:

    My bit about the undead Tory leadership contest, “the blob”, and the government fiddling while Britain burns https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/12/warring-tories-radical-change-mythical-liz-truss-rishi-sunak?CMP=share_btn_tw

    Your bit? You are Marina Hyde? Well, that's a turnup for the books.
  • Options
    ClippPClippP Posts: 1,687
    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    What was the name of the TV series about Elizabeth that you were recommending? I was trying to find it last nght with no success.

    Edit, btw, when you look at her speech at Tilbury it really is nonsense

    "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."
    Also, THAT speech at Tilbury. Quite magnificent. What a woman

    It gives you tingles simply by reading it, almost 500 years later. Amazing
    It was impressive, yes, but even more so because it was delivered by a woman. It would not have been half as impressive if it had been delivered (with the necessary changes) by a man.

    I am not sure why the London Luvvies are doing all they can to deny the existence of women. But perhaps they are all a bit confused themselves.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,193
    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism. It's like setting a drama in a medieval world and hearing people going on about gender equality, human rights and democracy.
    I don’t think it’s just you. It doesn’t appeal to me either. But I just cannot see the harm in it thought especially if it opens it up to new audiences. Like T20 cricket.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,290
    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine
  • Options
    Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,003
    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?
    Of course not. The Lockheed D-21 did M3+ in the 60s.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,801
    edited August 2022
    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?

    Seriously impressive if true, including the development timescale. Nothing like a special military operation war to rapidly advance the state of military technology.
    No; there have been supersonic drones for decades - e.g. the US D-21 (not sure if USAF or CIA). Soviets also had supersonic drones made by Tupolev. But those were strategic reconnaissance. Presumably those people are thinking of drones in the sence of tactical combat vehicles.
  • Options
    EPGEPG Posts: 6,013
    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,193
    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    My bit about the undead Tory leadership contest, “the blob”, and the government fiddling while Britain burns https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/12/warring-tories-radical-change-mythical-liz-truss-rishi-sunak?CMP=share_btn_tw

    Your bit? You are Marina Hyde? Well, that's a turnup for the books.
    Marina Hyde, peak centrist Dad wankfodder.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    Carnyx said:

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?

    Seriously impressive if true, including the development timescale. Nothing like a special military operation war to rapidly advance the state of military technology.
    No; there have been supersonic drones for decades - e.g. the US D-21 (not sure if USAF or CIA). Soviets also had supersonic drones made by Tupolev. But those were strategic reconnaissance. Presumably those people are thinking of drones in the sence of tactical combat vehicles.
    The D21 wasn't self- launched, either:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

    There have been plenty, as you say, but I think this also might be the first carrier based one if operational ?
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,193
    ClippP said:

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    What was the name of the TV series about Elizabeth that you were recommending? I was trying to find it last nght with no success.

    Edit, btw, when you look at her speech at Tilbury it really is nonsense

    "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."
    Also, THAT speech at Tilbury. Quite magnificent. What a woman

    It gives you tingles simply by reading it, almost 500 years later. Amazing
    It was impressive, yes, but even more so because it was delivered by a woman. It would not have been half as impressive if it had been delivered (with the necessary changes) by a man.

    I am not sure why the London Luvvies are doing all they can to deny the existence of women. But perhaps they are all a bit confused themselves.
    They’re not denying their existence, just redefining it.

    If I could post the picture I would but here you go.

    https://twitter.com/navyhato/status/1556796314393858049?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Leon said:

    I take back my long term optimism. Wokeness is going to destroy us. That essay is devastating


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine


    It gets worse and worse as you read on


    "In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. There were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial, therefore. Better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants."



    "The proponents of the systemic racism hypotheses are making a large bet with potentially lethal consequences. In accordance with the idea that racism causes racial health disparities, they are changing the direction of medical research, the composition of medical faculty, the curriculum of medical schools, the criteria for hiring researchers and for publishing research, and the standards for assessing professional excellence. They are substituting training in political advocacy for training in basic science. They are taking doctors out of the classroom, clinic, and lab and parking them in front of antiracism lecturers. Their preferential policies discourage individuals from pariah groups from going into medicine, regardless of their scientific potential. They have shifted billions of dollars from the investigation of pathophysiology to the production of tracts on microaggressions."

    It does make the case it purports to refute, though.

    "Black students are not admitted into competitive residencies at the same rate as whites because their average Step One test scores are a standard deviation below those of whites."

    Either being black makes you thick and lazy, or being brought up as a despised underclass in a country into which your ancestors were imported like cattle 200 years ago leaves you so far off the pace by age 20 that you never recover. I know which option is more likely, and if that is not structural racism, what is?

    So LOL at the conclusion that

    "America’s very real history of structural racism, a history that took us too long to remedy, resulted in segregated hospitals and cruel disparities in treatment. That past is belatedly but thankfully behind us."

    Course it is, dear, course it is.

    What the article is implicitly right about, is that young blacks are already so fucked by the age of 20 that you might as well write them off and that it is dangerous to pretend that you can adjust structural inequalities *at medical school* to remedy the injustice. Too late, doesn't work. But the facts underlying the piece should make us more, not less, aware of appalling systemic injustice to American, and not only american, blacks.
  • Options
    I've just failed to stifle a loud snort of derisory laughter at a stranger.

    I heard her say one sentence to her friend. I have no context to the comment, but would guess that she was talking about her son.

    She said,

    "On his first day, the school put him in a pigeon hold"
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    edited August 2022

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.
    Feck, just read the tweet and the original accusation. Truss really is a smouldering bin fire waiting to spring into life.

    Regardless of the performative wailing about dangerous Corbyn, he never actually was PM or close, she's odds on to be in No 10 shortly.
    She's basically just chuntering things like some sort of crazy reactionary chatbot. Mouth opens, words come out, they're in English and in approximately the right order and that's the only evidence of any governing intelligence at all.

    They used to call Johnson the Lucky Politician but I think it's time to revise this. Starmer is.
    Her first cabinet will tell us a lot about the tenor of the Truss pmship, very likely none of it good.
    Yes I have bad vibes indeed. And the fact Hyufd does too says a great deal when you think about it. Only saving grace is if I'm right in assessing her as a GE loser in waiting. Never mind about "more sex" the thing I'll say on my deathbed I didn't do enough of is "see the Tories lose elections".
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this

    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Chill.
    These things self correct fairly speedily.
    We are not funcked.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    .
    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,259
    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Trump will tear all this up in his second term.
  • Options
    wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,934
    Round up of this weeks 3 by elections.
    2 holds for the Tories, one in Spelthorne where they held off an LD challenge in a ward they lost in another by election in May (to the greens who didnt stand this time). A relatively comfortable hold on 55% although it ought to be, and they'll be a little relieved as it bucks the trend of recent horrors in Surrey.
    They also held a ward in Worcestershire on a pitiful turnout from a strong green challenge on about 48%. It should be safe tory and was uncontested in 2019, so an indication the southern, rural woes are not behind them yet by any means.
    Finally Labour lost Bridgend Central to an independant, its a multi member ward where labour and indies trade blows and it was Labours 2nd placed candidate from May who had stepped down. The Tories slipped further back in third perhaps hinting at Bridgend MP Jamie Wallis' recent travails.......
    Overall indications of things settling and, perhaps, the Tory vote strike easing off
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,259
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    It was planted by the FBI who are working for 'The Regime".

    See the NY Times piece I linked to earlier.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this

    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Chill.
    These things self correct fairly speedily.
    We are not funcked.
    Also, the idea that the pace of medical innovation is on the decline in the US is simply nonsense.

  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,898

    MaxPB said:

    On the energy stuff, what I'd really like to see from Labour is some kind of "Challenge 2027" or something along those lines to 5x our current renewable energy generation by the end of 2027. 5 years for 5x. This problem needs the full weight of government, industry and science. Not just hoping that private companies with no interest in increasing energy supply will magically invest money to increase energy supply and reduce their arbitration profits.

    Yes, this would be a way of building on one of the successes of the pandemic - the ventilator challenge. Have the same sort of thing, but for renewable energy supply.
    Possibly my favourite video of the whole pandemic:

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ij3g8kscdeA

    The story of how the Mercedes F1 team turned their race engine factory into a CPAP breathing machine factory, almost overnight.

    No matter what we all think of Dominic Cummings, his comments on needing a British DARPA were spot on. It’s starting up now. https://www.aria.org.uk/
  • Options
    DynamoDynamo Posts: 651
    edited August 2022
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    He's still favourite at Betfair for the Republican nomination. I wonder whether he will be in a week's time.

    Who can blame a man who owns a beachside property for keeping up with the latest technology for zapping hurricanes? :)

    A dozen doesn't seem like very many House Republicans. Some may flip.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,801
    edited August 2022
    Nigelb said:

    Carnyx said:

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?

    Seriously impressive if true, including the development timescale. Nothing like a special military operation war to rapidly advance the state of military technology.
    No; there have been supersonic drones for decades - e.g. the US D-21 (not sure if USAF or CIA). Soviets also had supersonic drones made by Tupolev. But those were strategic reconnaissance. Presumably those people are thinking of drones in the sence of tactical combat vehicles.
    The D21 wasn't self- launched, either:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

    There have been plenty, as you say, but I think this also might be the first carrier based one if operational ?
    Quite so. And I suppose a booster launch doesn't count either. Hmm, I did wonder what they mean by carrier. I wonder about a translation hiccup - aircraft carrier like the QE2/Nimitz, or carrier aircraft like the B-52. But it seems that the thijng is going to be deployed on the Turks' new aircraft carrier (of a kind more like the old Invincible). https://www.navaltoday.com/2022/02/28/turkish-navys-first-aircraft-carrier-to-enter-sea-trials/
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,798
    edited August 2022
    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Indeed. If all art is pushing similar messages and themes, and that is what the creators are predmoninantly interested in, it'll just get boring no matter if people agree with it. Variety and counter reaction will naturally occur.

    I do enjoy a good chuckle at some historical programmes, films and novels where characters are essentially entirely modern in all their attitudes though, at least without it being explained as potentially unusual. Better where they retain some common, unpalatable opinions for verisimilitude.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,193
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,290
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this

    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Chill.
    These things self correct fairly speedily.
    We are not funcked.
    You haven't read it, have you?

    This is not self correcting. And read the comments below: remarkable and disquieting. They prove this is true, and it has been going on for years. And there is no sign of it "correcting". It is speeding up, spreading, and getting worse

    Of course, if you eliminate all meritocracy from your society - from its legal, educational, and health systems, and so on- in favour of some illusory "racial justice", in the end your society will either collapse or devolve into racial war as the disfavoured vote for Trump, or something much worse than Trump

    This is Why Trump. I've just realised he is a symptom, not a cause
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,259
    Leon said:

    I take back my long term optimism. Wokeness is going to destroy us. That essay is devastating


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine


    It gets worse and worse as you read on


    "In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. There were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial, therefore. Better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants."



    "The proponents of the systemic racism hypotheses are making a large bet with potentially lethal consequences. In accordance with the idea that racism causes racial health disparities, they are changing the direction of medical research, the composition of medical faculty, the curriculum of medical schools, the criteria for hiring researchers and for publishing research, and the standards for assessing professional excellence. They are substituting training in political advocacy for training in basic science. They are taking doctors out of the classroom, clinic, and lab and parking them in front of antiracism lecturers. Their preferential policies discourage individuals from pariah groups from going into medicine, regardless of their scientific potential. They have shifted billions of dollars from the investigation of pathophysiology to the production of tracts on microaggressions."

    It is one of the more intense ironies of all this that the root of it all is post-modernist theories/snake oil about how truth is constructed through hierarchies of power and here we see precisely that. The wokists have the power (thanks to cancel culture fears) and are able to dictate what is the truth and what is reality.

    Derrida and co were geniuses after all.
  • Options

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    They/them/their has always been third person singular as well as third party plural, the idea its a plural only is a weird modern conceit.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,292
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    I think they've already said that anything found was planted. So the whole thing is fake.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,129
    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism. It's like setting a drama in a medieval world and hearing people going on about gender equality, human rights and democracy.
    Bleedin' culture warriors trying to tell us 1984 published in 1949 has anything to say to 2022.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,801
    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    Carnyx said:

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?

    Seriously impressive if true, including the development timescale. Nothing like a special military operation war to rapidly advance the state of military technology.
    No; there have been supersonic drones for decades - e.g. the US D-21 (not sure if USAF or CIA). Soviets also had supersonic drones made by Tupolev. But those were strategic reconnaissance. Presumably those people are thinking of drones in the sence of tactical combat vehicles.
    The D21 wasn't self- launched, either:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

    There have been plenty, as you say, but I think this also might be the first carrier based one if operational ?
    Quite so. And I suppose a booster launch doesn't count either. Hmm, I did wonder what they mean by carrier. I wonder about a translation hiccup - aircraft carrier like the QE2/Nimitz, or carrier aircraft like the B-52. But it seems that the thijng is going to be deployed on the Turks' new aircraft carrier (of a kind more like the old Invincible). https://www.navaltoday.com/2022/02/28/turkish-navys-first-aircraft-carrier-to-enter-sea-trials/
    Naval carrier, I'm pretty sure.
    As the most difficult thing about carrier operations is training and keeping trained the @Dura_Ace s, it's an understandable attempt at a shortcut.
    (I think they've already done carrier trials with their twin prop thing.)

  • Options
    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    Obviously the first thing to say is that it is vile and largely unevidenced.

    But Truss's recent emanations are also... baffling. If (as is likely) she has this in the bag, then the smart thing would be to wave and smile a lot and say nothing controversial. And given how much trouble she causes by the things she says, that might be how a wise adviser should be advising her.

    I mean, there's dead cat theory, but this is ridiculous.
  • Options
    kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,956
    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
    Wouldn't a show about Elagabalus be more appropriate?
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,290
    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    I take back my long term optimism. Wokeness is going to destroy us. That essay is devastating


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine


    It gets worse and worse as you read on


    "In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. There were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial, therefore. Better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants."



    "The proponents of the systemic racism hypotheses are making a large bet with potentially lethal consequences. In accordance with the idea that racism causes racial health disparities, they are changing the direction of medical research, the composition of medical faculty, the curriculum of medical schools, the criteria for hiring researchers and for publishing research, and the standards for assessing professional excellence. They are substituting training in political advocacy for training in basic science. They are taking doctors out of the classroom, clinic, and lab and parking them in front of antiracism lecturers. Their preferential policies discourage individuals from pariah groups from going into medicine, regardless of their scientific potential. They have shifted billions of dollars from the investigation of pathophysiology to the production of tracts on microaggressions."

    It does make the case it purports to refute, though.

    "Black students are not admitted into competitive residencies at the same rate as whites because their average Step One test scores are a standard deviation below those of whites."

    Either being black makes you thick and lazy, or being brought up as a despised underclass in a country into which your ancestors were imported like cattle 200 years ago leaves you so far off the pace by age 20 that you never recover. I know which option is more likely, and if that is not structural racism, what is?

    So LOL at the conclusion that

    "America’s very real history of structural racism, a history that took us too long to remedy, resulted in segregated hospitals and cruel disparities in treatment. That past is belatedly but thankfully behind us."

    Course it is, dear, course it is.

    What the article is implicitly right about, is that young blacks are already so fucked by the age of 20 that you might as well write them off and that it is dangerous to pretend that you can adjust structural inequalities *at medical school* to remedy the injustice. Too late, doesn't work. But the facts underlying the piece should make us more, not less, aware of appalling systemic injustice to American, and not only american, blacks.
    And yet, the Jews seem to do OK despite being actually fed into ovens in Nazi Europe - and horribly discriminated against everywhere else - all within living memory

    The endpoint of Woke gibberish and "affirmative action" in medicine is that people will choose white and Asian doctors, because they will believe - with justification, if this article is correct - that the black doctor is probably less qualified, and possibly only graduated because he/she was given a much easier time

    So the end result will be MORE racism. Great. Bravo. Well done

  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,631
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this

    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Chill.
    These things self correct fairly speedily.
    We are not funcked.
    You haven't read it, have you?

    This is not self correcting. And read the comments below: remarkable and disquieting. They prove this is true, and it has been going on for years. And there is no sign of it "correcting". It is speeding up, spreading, and getting worse

    Of course, if you eliminate all meritocracy from your society - from its legal, educational, and health systems, and so on- in favour of some illusory "racial justice", in the end your society will either collapse or devolve into racial war as the disfavoured vote for Trump, or something much worse than Trump

    This is Why Trump. I've just realised he is a symptom, not a cause
    "I'll stop in a minute, I promise"...

  • Options

    ...

    Taz said:

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    DavidL said:

    Around here the combine harvesters are currently going around the clock. If you are out at night you see them lit up with multiple lights working away. What is really noticeable this year is that much of the wheat, oats and barley is extremely stunted, quite often not more than 1ft high whilst it would normally be at least 2ft, sometimes more. The rape was less affected in the early summer but it is intense now and we have had far more rain than most of England.

    Yields are going to be pretty bad and there is likely to be a serious shortage of fodder for livestock by the spring. Our already substantial volume of food imports is going to increase sharply and we will be paying world prices for it which are going to be significantly higher. Lost production and exports from both Ukraine and Russia won't help much either.

    The idea that this current burst of inflation is soon going to go away (as the BoE was claiming only weeks ago) is wildly optimistic. Sunak has been rather all over the place of late but he is right that inflation is probably our biggest single problem.

    Another place that will have a nasty knock-on effect is student loans, where some of them have interest charged at the rate of inflation.

    I might look to clear the remainder of mine if I can earn enough this year.
    You have a student loan at your age?!

    Sorry - just startled: that really drives it home.
    Yes, people forget they go back to the days of new labour and Blair.
    They came in before 1997. Charging students for courses was granted a New Labour project capped at £3500 p a I believe.
    I was the first year in 1998 which had to pay it . £1,000 pa.. seems such small fry now.
    I graduated in 1997, still had a maintenance grant for 1996/7.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,850

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism. It's like setting a drama in a medieval world and hearing people going on about gender equality, human rights and democracy.
    Bleedin' culture warriors trying to tell us 1984 published in 1949 has anything to say to 2022.
    It showed us the way that the world might have gone (in 1949) but fortunately, did not, outside a handful of hellholes.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,898
    Dura_Ace said:

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    Interesting potential kit.

    Baykar plans to assemble new unmanned fighter jet in Ukraine
    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/baykar-plans-to-assemble-new-unmanned-fighter-jet-in-ukraine
    ...Bayraktar Kizilelma is a jet supersonic stealthy carrier-capable UAV with a Ukrainian engine, developed by the Turkish defense company Baykar. Its prototype was demonstrated in March 2022....

    Supersonic drone! Is that a first?
    Of course not. The Lockheed D-21 did M3+ in the 60s.
    Yes, but that was a mad prototype that ended up going nowhere, and despite being a drone still managed to kill pilots.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,798
    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
  • Options
    BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 18,726
    edited August 2022
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.
    Feck, just read the tweet and the original accusation. Truss really is a smouldering bin fire waiting to spring into life.

    Regardless of the performative wailing about dangerous Corbyn, he never actually was PM or close, she's odds on to be in No 10 shortly.
    She's basically just chuntering things like some sort of crazy reactionary chatbot. Mouth opens, words come out, they're in English and in approximately the right order and that's the only evidence of any governing intelligence at all.

    They used to call Johnson the Lucky Politician but I think it's time to revise this. Starmer is.
    Her first cabinet will tell us a lot about the tenor of the Truss pmship, very likely none of it good.
    Yes I have bad vibes indeed. And the fact Hyufd does too says a great deal when you think about it. Only saving grace is if I'm right in assessing her as a GE loser in waiting. Never mind about "more sex" the thing I'll say on my deathbed I didn't do enough of is "see the Tories lose elections".
    Not really, HYUFD has bad vibes because he's worried she'll be too liberal and like Churchill she fails his "always a Tory" test.

    If HYUFD is worried about that, then I consider that a good thing.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,129
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism. It's like setting a drama in a medieval world and hearing people going on about gender equality, human rights and democracy.
    Bleedin' culture warriors trying to tell us 1984 published in 1949 has anything to say to 2022.
    It showed us the way that the world might have gone (in 1949) but fortunately, did not, outside a handful of hellholes.
    And yet every low imagination twitter twat and GB News cliché monger leaps at it as a description of why we're all fcuked today.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,798
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    Step 1 has already been noted by several people, ie that if anything is found it will have been planted.

    Step 2 has also already been used, and not merely by Trump fans, that if this is really just about classified documents that it was a big mistake and will just mean he will win again as people won't care. That it is allleged to be about the nuclear programme won't affect that.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,850
    edited August 2022
    kyf_100 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
    Wouldn't a show about Elagabalus be more appropriate?
    A transgender Elagalabus, or Nero, would not be anachronistic.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,798
    kyf_100 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
    Wouldn't a show about Elagabalus be more appropriate?
    Lacks the public profile of a Julius or Caligula. He needs a better agent.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,287
    Dynamo said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    He's still favourite at Betfair for the Republican nomination. I wonder whether he will be in a week's time.

    Who can blame a man who owns a beachside property for keeping up with the latest technology for zapping hurricanes? :)

    A dozen doesn't seem like very many House Republicans. Some may flip.
    Most of them are already totally flipped.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,798
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    Facts should not get in the way of a good story or performance. Of course, even a story or performance with a clear intended message should not simply be a lecture if it is to be enjoyable though. So artists should generally determine what part is most important and how subtle they want to be.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,290
    No wonder the Chinese are confident

    The West is busy damaging itself, and the lead nation in the West, the USA, is practically pouring gasoline over itself, while playing with a Zippo

    When they come to write the History of what Woke did to us all, I wonder if the Chinese will be at the bottom of it, at least in part. You can get great nations to self harm, if you know the right buttons to push. American guilt over slavery is a big fat red button

    See also: Scottish Nationalism. And, to be fair, Brexit, quite probably (even if I believe in it, I imagine Xi and Putin approve of it, simply as it is another disruptor)
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,850
    edited August 2022
    kle4 said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
    Wouldn't a show about Elagabalus be more appropriate?
    Lacks the public profile of a Julius or Caligula. He needs a better agent.
    Nero castrated his boyfriend, Sporus, in the hope of turning him into a woman, and then married him. He in turn, dressed as a woman, to be taken as a bride by Spiculus. And, Nero is pretty well known today.

    Sporus' life was a complete horror show. Nero's successors treated him as one of the spoils of war, until he took his life, because Vitellius planned to have him publicly raped in the Arena.
  • Options

    Wow. Sounds as if Liz Truss is weaponizing the concept of anti-Semitism as part of her crusade against the British civil service.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/12/liz-truss-protect-british-jews-antisemitism-woke-culture

    Good for her. 👍

    Antisemitism is tolerated too often in this country. Just because Corbyn is gone is no reason not to continue tackling it.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,308
    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    To take one very obvious example by the same logic the fact that in almost every culture women have a better life expectancy than men must conclusively prove that society is inherently biased against men and fails to recognise inherent female privilege, that any suggestion that women are disadvantaged or ever have been disadvantaged is a failure to recognise the structual biases that cause men to die at an earlier age.

    It is, quite frankly, both mad and depressing.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,686
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    He wrote lots of cross dressing and gender confusion into his plays too.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 91,798
    Dynamo said:

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    He's still favourite at Betfair for the Republican nomination. I wonder whether he will be in a week's time.

    Who can blame a man who owns a beachside property for keeping up with the latest technology for zapping hurricanes? :)

    A dozen doesn't seem like very many House Republicans. Some may flip.
    Every now and again he says or does something that causes some of them to mildly rebuke him, or at least imply they might wish to rebuke him, by criticising in general terms without naming him. Pence had a rally for a rival to a Trump candidate and despite an armed mob incited by Trump including people wanting to kill him wouldn't criticise Trump by name.

    They always return to the fold once things quiet down.
  • Options
    Leon said:

    No wonder the Chinese are confident

    The West is busy damaging itself, and the lead nation in the West, the USA, is practically pouring gasoline over itself, while playing with a Zippo

    When they come to write the History of what Woke did to us all, I wonder if the Chinese will be at the bottom of it, at least in part. You can get great nations to self harm, if you know the right buttons to push. American guilt over slavery is a big fat red button

    See also: Scottish Nationalism. And, to be fair, Brexit, quite probably (even if I believe in it, I imagine Xi and Putin approve of it, simply as it is another disruptor)

    Disruption is a good thing, not a bad thing.

    That Putin's Russia has failed to be disrupted enough is precisely why its ended up with so out of touch, delusional, corrupt and with a Potemkin military.

    That we embrace disruptions and challenge ourselves more than our enemies challenge us is the West's greatest strength, not our weakness. 1960s you would have been talking about the death of the West due to the younger generation embracing counterculture values etc
  • Options
    kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,956
    Sean_F said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
    Wouldn't a show about Elagabalus be more appropriate?
    A transgender Elagalabus, or Nero, would not be anachronistic.
    Which is kinda my point - if you want to do a show about historical figures that challenges gender norms, there are plenty of gender nonconforming characters from history to draw from.

    Though even I'd draw the line at Herman Goering Storytime Hour in local libraries.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.
    Feck, just read the tweet and the original accusation. Truss really is a smouldering bin fire waiting to spring into life.

    Regardless of the performative wailing about dangerous Corbyn, he never actually was PM or close, she's odds on to be in No 10 shortly.
    She's basically just chuntering things like some sort of crazy reactionary chatbot. Mouth opens, words come out, they're in English and in approximately the right order and that's the only evidence of any governing intelligence at all.

    They used to call Johnson the Lucky Politician but I think it's time to revise this. Starmer is.
    Her first cabinet will tell us a lot about the tenor of the Truss pmship, very likely none of it good.
    Yes I have bad vibes indeed. And the fact Hyufd does too says a great deal when you think about it. Only saving grace is if I'm right in assessing her as a GE loser in waiting. Never mind about "more sex" the thing I'll say on my deathbed I didn't do enough of is "see the Tories lose elections".
    Not really, HYUFD has bad vibes because he's worried she'll be too liberal and like Churchill she fails his "always a Tory" test.

    If HYUFD is worried about that, then I consider that a good thing.
    Hardly. He's worried about the likes of Mogg and Dorries and Redwood and "maybe even Francois" in the cabinet.

    This is not fear of liberalism. It's fear of ultra right crazies getting the inside track, wrecking the country and - what's more, much more than this - losing the general election for The Party.
  • Options
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.
    Feck, just read the tweet and the original accusation. Truss really is a smouldering bin fire waiting to spring into life.

    Regardless of the performative wailing about dangerous Corbyn, he never actually was PM or close, she's odds on to be in No 10 shortly.
    She's basically just chuntering things like some sort of crazy reactionary chatbot. Mouth opens, words come out, they're in English and in approximately the right order and that's the only evidence of any governing intelligence at all.

    They used to call Johnson the Lucky Politician but I think it's time to revise this. Starmer is.
    Her first cabinet will tell us a lot about the tenor of the Truss pmship, very likely none of it good.
    Yes I have bad vibes indeed. And the fact Hyufd does too says a great deal when you think about it. Only saving grace is if I'm right in assessing her as a GE loser in waiting. Never mind about "more sex" the thing I'll say on my deathbed I didn't do enough of is "see the Tories lose elections".
    Not really, HYUFD has bad vibes because he's worried she'll be too liberal and like Churchill she fails his "always a Tory" test.

    If HYUFD is worried about that, then I consider that a good thing.
    Hardly. He's worried about the likes of Mogg and Dorries and Redwood and "maybe even Francois" in the cabinet.

    This is not fear of liberalism. It's fear of ultra right crazies getting the inside track, wrecking the country and - what's more, much more than this - losing the general election for The Party.
    He's not worried about that, he's hoping for that!
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,850
    edited August 2022
    Leon said:

    No wonder the Chinese are confident

    The West is busy damaging itself, and the lead nation in the West, the USA, is practically pouring gasoline over itself, while playing with a Zippo

    When they come to write the History of what Woke did to us all, I wonder if the Chinese will be at the bottom of it, at least in part. You can get great nations to self harm, if you know the right buttons to push. American guilt over slavery is a big fat red button

    See also: Scottish Nationalism. And, to be fair, Brexit, quite probably (even if I believe in it, I imagine Xi and Putin approve of it, simply as it is another disruptor)

    The Chinese have in fairly recent times practised genocide, slavery, wars of imperial aggression, religious persecution, and feel not a qualm of guilt over it.

    Since we're discussing Shakespeare (inter alia) "self love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting."
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,259
    edited August 2022
    Emily Sheffield
    @emilysheffield
    ·
    3h
    Today in my column I wrote about how @trussliz
    has learnt the art of political gaslighting. Forget footballers, politicians are the best at it. I filed copy before
    @trussliz said civil servants are not only to blame for holding us back for 20 years but also massive anti semites


    I know we are in an election period but this kind of talk is dangerous, wrong, debases politics, government, Westminster and this country. I started this campaign with grudging respect for
    @trussliz I now think her out of control.

    https://twitter.com/emilysheffield/status/1558039374629158912

    ===

    As I predicted on here at the start of all this, the power of being PM will send Truss total bonkers within months. She just has that air about her. Maybe I am being grossly unfair, we shall see, but iirc at least one other PBer has noted that she seems to be Thatcher in the late stages of her term in office.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,290
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    To take one very obvious example by the same logic the fact that in almost every culture women have a better life expectancy than men must conclusively prove that society is inherently biased against men and fails to recognise inherent female privilege, that any suggestion that women are disadvantaged or ever have been disadvantaged is a failure to recognise the structual biases that cause men to die at an earlier age.

    It is, quite frankly, both mad and depressing.
    Yes, of course. This is a society going crazy. Seized by a mad ideology

    It is an astounding essay, but also astoundingly disheartening. I rather wish I had not read it. I was feeling all chirpy

    Ah well. Wine and the park beckons! Live for the moment, as the future is OMFG
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    I take back my long term optimism. Wokeness is going to destroy us. That essay is devastating


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine


    It gets worse and worse as you read on


    "In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. There were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial, therefore. Better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants."



    "The proponents of the systemic racism hypotheses are making a large bet with potentially lethal consequences. In accordance with the idea that racism causes racial health disparities, they are changing the direction of medical research, the composition of medical faculty, the curriculum of medical schools, the criteria for hiring researchers and for publishing research, and the standards for assessing professional excellence. They are substituting training in political advocacy for training in basic science. They are taking doctors out of the classroom, clinic, and lab and parking them in front of antiracism lecturers. Their preferential policies discourage individuals from pariah groups from going into medicine, regardless of their scientific potential. They have shifted billions of dollars from the investigation of pathophysiology to the production of tracts on microaggressions."

    It does make the case it purports to refute, though.

    "Black students are not admitted into competitive residencies at the same rate as whites because their average Step One test scores are a standard deviation below those of whites."

    Either being black makes you thick and lazy, or being brought up as a despised underclass in a country into which your ancestors were imported like cattle 200 years ago leaves you so far off the pace by age 20 that you never recover. I know which option is more likely, and if that is not structural racism, what is?

    So LOL at the conclusion that

    "America’s very real history of structural racism, a history that took us too long to remedy, resulted in segregated hospitals and cruel disparities in treatment. That past is belatedly but thankfully behind us."

    Course it is, dear, course it is.

    What the article is implicitly right about, is that young blacks are already so fucked by the age of 20 that you might as well write them off and that it is dangerous to pretend that you can adjust structural inequalities *at medical school* to remedy the injustice. Too late, doesn't work. But the facts underlying the piece should make us more, not less, aware of appalling systemic injustice to American, and not only american, blacks.
    And yet, the Jews seem to do OK despite being actually fed into ovens in Nazi Europe - and horribly discriminated against everywhere else - all within living memory

    The endpoint of Woke gibberish and "affirmative action" in medicine is that people will choose white and Asian doctors, because they will believe - with justification, if this article is correct - that the black doctor is probably less qualified, and possibly only graduated because he/she was given a much easier time

    So the end result will be MORE racism. Great. Bravo. Well done
    *Such* a doughty battler against racism in all its forms.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,287
    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    No wonder the Chinese are confident

    The West is busy damaging itself, and the lead nation in the West, the USA, is practically pouring gasoline over itself, while playing with a Zippo

    When they come to write the History of what Woke did to us all, I wonder if the Chinese will be at the bottom of it, at least in part. You can get great nations to self harm, if you know the right buttons to push. American guilt over slavery is a big fat red button

    See also: Scottish Nationalism. And, to be fair, Brexit, quite probably (even if I believe in it, I imagine Xi and Putin approve of it, simply as it is another disruptor)

    The Chinese have in fairly recent times practised genocide, slavery, wars of imperial aggression, religious persecution, and feel not a qualm of guilt over it.
    'Fairly recent times?' When did they stop? I thought they were still going after the Uighers in Xinjiang.
  • Options
    Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,543
    edited August 2022
    kle4 said:

    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
    In theory, you're right, In practice, however, there's a whole load of folk out there who are determined to paint any criticism of the Israeli government, and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-semitic even when there's absolutely no such tropes or neo-imperialist guff about such criticisms. It rather sounds like Liz Truss may be one of these folk.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,801
    kyf_100 said:

    Sean_F said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    In more "just like panto dames" news

    The Globe is calling Queen Elizabeth "they/them"

    WTF?


    Oh God. Oh God. Make it all go away. I fucking hate it
    Joan of Arc too!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11105319/Backlash-grows-against-Shakespeares-Globe-Theatre-new-play-depicting-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html
    I can’t say this bothers me at all. Or that black woman playing Ann Boleyn (great stunt casting to get publicity for the show) or anything along these lines. These are dramas not documentaries and creatives should be able to interpret how they want.
    It seems to me like the worst kind of fanfiction, where the lead character just becomes the author's self-insert. Joan of Arc becomes a 21st century non-binary individual wearing medieval costume.

    I'd like to see the world through the eyes of Joan of Arc; not through the eyes of the author or lead actor.

    A 15th Frenchwoman, would take the existence of Christ and His saints for granted, and her principal concerns would be surviving the English army and ensuring she had enough to eat. She would not be remotely concerned with 21st century first world problems.
    But why not, when appealing to modern audiences, put in 21st century problems.

    We’ve seen the nativity remade numerous times in modern settings. One I remember from the eighties on TV being in a bus stop in Liverpool.

    I don’t see the harm in it. People will vote with their feet if it’s a crap idea.
    Set it in the 21st century then, with liberal 21st century characters. Perhaps it's just me, but I detest anachronism...
    Shakespeare embraced it.

    This new production looks ace.

    https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1558054225816477696?s=21&t=IXhglKI-upq3TR-BixL0cA
    Bloody funny 'prounouns', even if old Julius did swing both ways.
    Wouldn't a show about Elagabalus be more appropriate?
    A transgender Elagalabus, or Nero, would not be anachronistic.
    Which is kinda my point - if you want to do a show about historical figures that challenges gender norms, there are plenty of gender nonconforming characters from history to draw from.

    Though even I'd draw the line at Herman Goering Storytime Hour in local libraries.
    The latter wouldn't surprise me in some towns if it was a 1940s theme week. They were pretty heavily changed by the Reichsmarschal: from Clydebank to Liverpool to Coventry ... quite a lot of social and local history there!
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,290
    Another quite terrifying essay on Wokeness in US medicine. Not remotely as brilliant and articulate as the other, but also much shorter

    https://nypost.com/2022/07/28/we-must-fight-back-against-health-cares-terrifying-conquest-by-the-radically-woke/


    "Rolled out in mid-July, these new standards are overtly ideological. They will train medical students for political activism as much as medical care. Don’t take my word for it: When announcing the standards, the AAMC’s president and chair of its council of deans declared that woke identity politics “deserves just as much attention from learners and educators at every stage of their careers as the latest scientific breakthroughs.”"
  • Options

    kle4 said:

    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
    In theory, you're right, In practice, however, there's a whole load of folk out there who are determined to paint any criticism of the Israeli government, and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-semitic even when there's absolutely no such tropes or neo-imperialist guff about such criticisms. It rather sounds like Liz Truss may be one of these folk.
    If someone painstaking consistently criticises Israel and only Israel then yes that is antisemitic.

    If for instance there is a BDS policy against Israel and only Israel, not China or anywhere else undeniably even worse than Israel then yes it is very antisemitic.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    Popcorn time later today.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/FordJohnathan5/status/1558060633492520967
    So a dozen of House Republicans planned to hit the news this morning or have press conferences regarding the search warrant executed on Donald Trump have canceled all appearances. As the Department of Justice plans to unseal the search warrant at 3pm today.

    It looks as though he took classified information on the US nuclear weapons programme from the White House. I wonder how the Trump loyalists will try to spin that. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
    I think they've already said that anything found was planted. So the whole thing is fake.
    Course. MAGA is a cult with an evil charismatic calculating leader and a membership of 20% of the population. I'm confident Trump himself won't see the inside of the Oval Office again but I don't see how the cult itself goes away without setting fire to the compound.
  • Options
    IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    To take one very obvious example by the same logic the fact that in almost every culture women have a better life expectancy than men must conclusively prove that society is inherently biased against men and fails to recognise inherent female privilege, that any suggestion that women are disadvantaged or ever have been disadvantaged is a failure to recognise the structual biases that cause men to die at an earlier age.

    It is, quite frankly, both mad and depressing.
    So you really think that black people are *biologically* less well able than whites and Asians to be educated so as to become competent doctors, and that there is inherent white privilege here which qwe should just put up with cos there is nothing to be done about it?
  • Options

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    Rather bizarre accusation by Truss seems to have annoyed the CS.

    https://twitter.com/FDAGenSec/status/1558046635233628161?t=0Y9OemilQYMn1BJy6nFT3g&s=19

    It's not a bizarre accusation, really.
    It's a gratuitously offensive accusation.
    She needs, quickly, to come up with evidence of CS anti-semitism, or retract and apologise.
    Feck, just read the tweet and the original accusation. Truss really is a smouldering bin fire waiting to spring into life.

    Regardless of the performative wailing about dangerous Corbyn, he never actually was PM or close, she's odds on to be in No 10 shortly.
    She's basically just chuntering things like some sort of crazy reactionary chatbot. Mouth opens, words come out, they're in English and in approximately the right order and that's the only evidence of any governing intelligence at all.

    They used to call Johnson the Lucky Politician but I think it's time to revise this. Starmer is.
    Her first cabinet will tell us a lot about the tenor of the Truss pmship, very likely none of it good.
    Yes I have bad vibes indeed. And the fact Hyufd does too says a great deal when you think about it. Only saving grace is if I'm right in assessing her as a GE loser in waiting. Never mind about "more sex" the thing I'll say on my deathbed I didn't do enough of is "see the Tories lose elections".
    Not really, HYUFD has bad vibes because he's worried she'll be too liberal and like Churchill she fails his "always a Tory" test.

    If HYUFD is worried about that, then I consider that a good thing.
    Hardly. He's worried about the likes of Mogg and Dorries and Redwood and "maybe even Francois" in the cabinet.

    This is not fear of liberalism. It's fear of ultra right crazies getting the inside track, wrecking the country and - what's more, much more than this - losing the general election for The Party.
    He's not worried about that, he's hoping for that!
    More importantly, are you worried about that?

    Not so much the defeat in 2024, but the possibility that right-wing crazies, the sort of people who really really wish they could be US Republicans, who are socially really quite authoritarian, are going to have two years and an 80 seat majority to play with?
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Trump will tear all this up in his second term.
    There will be no Trump 2nd term.
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    Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,543

    kle4 said:

    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
    In theory, you're right, In practice, however, there's a whole load of folk out there who are determined to paint any criticism of the Israeli government, and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-semitic even when there's absolutely no such tropes or neo-imperialist guff about such criticisms. It rather sounds like Liz Truss may be one of these folk.
    If someone painstaking consistently criticises Israel and only Israel then yes that is antisemitic.

    If for instance there is a BDS policy against Israel and only Israel, not China or anywhere else undeniably even worse than Israel then yes it is very antisemitic.
    Would you like to provide evidence of anti-semitism in the Civil Service? I don't think Truss has yet.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,898
    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    DavidL said:

    Pulpstar said:

    DavidL said:

    Scott_xP said:

    The Truss years (or weeks) are going to be spectacular.

    BoZo will seem like a sure hand on the tiller by comparison

    No other incoming PM will have had such an array of massive problrms....or maybe any suggestions from the past?
    The Coaltion government faced at least as bad an intray, arguably worse.
    You are joking aren't you ?
    Absolutely not. I really don't think people appreciate how close to the edge we were in 2008-2010, not just in the UK but throughout the west. We had also kicked out a government that had failed to have a spending review, who had given open ended and unaffordable largesse to the populatiion by way of election bribes and we had to make a Coalition work, something that this country had very little experience of. The government really did need to both increase taxes and decrease spending year after year carefully running the line between modest growth and acutal recession as they tried to repair the mess.
    With respect I think you're talking absolute mince. We're in a far worse position now than 2010.
    I am afraid I must agree

    2008 was pretty grim for many people, but what we face now is that times twenty, or a hundred. We have similar recessions looming, plus much bigger debts, plus the tail end of a global plague, plus a horrible war in Europe, plus a brutal energy crisis, plus an apparent speeding of climate change, plus a number of countries in deep trouble around the world (Sri Lanka, etc) the list is dark and endless

    It's difficult to believe as I stare out at a sunny, happy London, but the world is likely in the most perilous position since WW2
    I know you like to be thought of as the PB polemicist, but on this occasion you’re right.

    The pandemic has called into question decades of orthodoxy around the world, whether it be manufacturing supply lines or dependence on despotic regimes for fuel supplies.
  • Options
    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,287
    This thread has

    been served with a Federal Warrant

  • Options

    kle4 said:

    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
    In theory, you're right, In practice, however, there's a whole load of folk out there who are determined to paint any criticism of the Israeli government, and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-semitic even when there's absolutely no such tropes or neo-imperialist guff about such criticisms. It rather sounds like Liz Truss may be one of these folk.
    If someone painstaking consistently criticises Israel and only Israel then yes that is antisemitic.

    If for instance there is a BDS policy against Israel and only Israel, not China or anywhere else undeniably even worse than Israel then yes it is very antisemitic.
    Would you like to provide evidence of anti-semitism in the Civil Service? I don't think Truss has yet.
    She has.

    BDS policies being implemented by public bodies is public sector antisemitism.
  • Options

    NEW THREAD

  • Options
    Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,543

    kle4 said:

    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
    In theory, you're right, In practice, however, there's a whole load of folk out there who are determined to paint any criticism of the Israeli government, and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-semitic even when there's absolutely no such tropes or neo-imperialist guff about such criticisms. It rather sounds like Liz Truss may be one of these folk.
    If someone painstaking consistently criticises Israel and only Israel then yes that is antisemitic.

    If for instance there is a BDS policy against Israel and only Israel, not China or anywhere else undeniably even worse than Israel then yes it is very antisemitic.
    Would you like to provide evidence of anti-semitism in the Civil Service? I don't think Truss has yet.
    She has.

    BDS policies being implemented by public bodies is public sector antisemitism.
    I said in the Civil Service. The bodies referred to are not staffed by civil servants.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    I'll stop in a minute, I promise, but that essay on Wokeness in American science is a MUST read. Yes it is long, but it is also brilliantly written

    And it is seriously depressing. I challenge anyone to read it and not think, at the end, My God we're fucked. In fact it is so dispiriting it is probably best read with a very large gin and tonic

    I won't link again after this

    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine

    Chill.
    These things self correct fairly speedily.
    We are not funcked.
    You haven't read it, have you?

    This is not self correcting. And read the comments below: remarkable and disquieting. They prove this is true, and it has been going on for years. And there is no sign of it "correcting". It is speeding up, spreading, and getting worse

    Of course, if you eliminate all meritocracy from your society - from its legal, educational, and health systems, and so on- in favour of some illusory "racial justice", in the end your society will either collapse or devolve into racial war as the disfavoured vote for Trump, or something much worse than Trump

    This is Why Trump. I've just realised he is a symptom, not a cause
    Symptom AND a cause. Symptom because there's no way a country in good shape would elect such a person as their president. Cause because he is 100% devoted to inflaming problems rather than attempting to resolve them.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,259
    Jeremy Cliffe
    @JeremyCliffe
    ·
    2h
    Germany's Greens - the one party that saw the crisis of gas dependency coming, opposed Putin constantly, and has a clear answer to the ensuring problems - are now level with the CDU/CSU at 1st place in the polls.
  • Options
    RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788
    The Eurovision cities shortlist being released today has led to a second media appearance for the Ukraine flag that's currently hanging in my window. It's on the ITV News website after appearing on the BBC News website back in June as a Press Association photo.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,292

    kle4 said:

    EPG said:

    Vile. The idea that if you aren't loudly and performatively pro-Israel and pro-settlements, you must be Adolf.

    It is extremely easy to criticise the Israeli government and the settlement policy without drifting into any anti-semitism tropes or nonsensical views on neo-imperialism or whatever the general worldview of the loonier side of things is focused on. Sure, fringe idiots may still make such a claim, but it will be seen as ridiculous.
    In theory, you're right, In practice, however, there's a whole load of folk out there who are determined to paint any criticism of the Israeli government, and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-semitic even when there's absolutely no such tropes or neo-imperialist guff about such criticisms. It rather sounds like Liz Truss may be one of these folk.
    If someone painstaking consistently criticises Israel and only Israel then yes that is antisemitic.

    If for instance there is a BDS policy against Israel and only Israel, not China or anywhere else undeniably even worse than Israel then yes it is very antisemitic.
    I don't think that's fair. Campaign groups are often, by necessity, single-issue. If there was a campaign group calling for a BDS policy against China, because of the occupation of Tibet or the Uighur genocide, would they be anti-Chinese racists because they weren't also calling for sanctions against Morocco, Israel, etc?
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,003

    Jeremy Cliffe
    @JeremyCliffe
    ·
    2h
    Germany's Greens - the one party that saw the crisis of gas dependency coming, opposed Putin constantly, and has a clear answer to the ensuring problems - are now level with the CDU/CSU at 1st place in the polls.

    Would that be the same Greens that - even today - are opposed to nuclear plant life extensions in Germany?
  • Options
    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,465
    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    I take back my long term optimism. Wokeness is going to destroy us. That essay is devastating


    https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine


    It gets worse and worse as you read on


    "In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. There were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial, therefore. Better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants."



    "The proponents of the systemic racism hypotheses are making a large bet with potentially lethal consequences. In accordance with the idea that racism causes racial health disparities, they are changing the direction of medical research, the composition of medical faculty, the curriculum of medical schools, the criteria for hiring researchers and for publishing research, and the standards for assessing professional excellence. They are substituting training in political advocacy for training in basic science. They are taking doctors out of the classroom, clinic, and lab and parking them in front of antiracism lecturers. Their preferential policies discourage individuals from pariah groups from going into medicine, regardless of their scientific potential. They have shifted billions of dollars from the investigation of pathophysiology to the production of tracts on microaggressions."

    It does make the case it purports to refute, though.

    "Black students are not admitted into competitive residencies at the same rate as whites because their average Step One test scores are a standard deviation below those of whites."

    Either being black makes you thick and lazy, or being brought up as a despised underclass in a country into which your ancestors were imported like cattle 200 years ago leaves you so far off the pace by age 20 that you never recover. I know which option is more likely, and if that is not structural racism, what is?

    So LOL at the conclusion that

    "America’s very real history of structural racism, a history that took us too long to remedy, resulted in segregated hospitals and cruel disparities in treatment. That past is belatedly but thankfully behind us."

    Course it is, dear, course it is.

    What the article is implicitly right about, is that young blacks are already so fucked by the age of 20 that you might as well write them off and that it is dangerous to pretend that you can adjust structural inequalities *at medical school* to remedy the injustice. Too late, doesn't work. But the facts underlying the piece should make us more, not less, aware of appalling systemic injustice to American, and not only american, blacks.
    It could also be that teachers have lower expectations for black students, and therefore don't push them as hard.

    What is needed is the system having faith in black students, expecting the very highest standards, and pushing them to achieve. Instead, we get the demonstrably racist notion that black students cannot perform as well because the curriculum is 'white'.

    Anti-racism really is just racism. In fact, it's unlikely that 'anti-anything' really exists.
This discussion has been closed.